


Companions React  to a Sole Survivor Enduring the Loss of Their Child

by tea_petty



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Child Death, F/F, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-09
Updated: 2019-09-09
Packaged: 2020-10-13 11:50:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20582039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tea_petty/pseuds/tea_petty
Summary: They never considered the possibility that Shaun was in fact, not the first child the Sole Survivor had to part with.





	Companions React  to a Sole Survivor Enduring the Loss of Their Child

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to my Tumblr; tea-petty

“No really, how do you do it?” Isabel asked, her eyes sparkling like Christmas lights even in the grimy, oil tempered brightness of what was formerly the Mechanist’s lair.

Sole shrugged, shooting her friend an enduring half-smile. It had been months since they’d put the Mechanist to rest, and yet Isabel still seemed to enjoy dredging up that fateful afternoon as if it had never ended.

“Seriously! I tried for years to save the Commonwealth – it was my life’s work,” her voice tightened momentarily. The tension was so fleeting it was more of a pulsate, “but you, you dropped from a vault one day, and boom! A hero was born.”

Sole resisted the urge to cringe.

“I wouldn’t say it happened like that,”

“Well, sure, okay,” Isabel paused from the mechanical form sprawled before her to place one hand on the baggy hip of her jumpsuit. The other hand drew across her brow, leaving a dark streak of motor oil.

Sole was about to open her mouth to point it out, before Isabel was speaking again.

“But whatever way you spin it, you’re a hero.”

A twinge of irritation panged through Sole. The swell of emotion was so abrupt, she felt more of the surprise than the bile of anger itself. 

“Except for maybe the Institute though, I guess,” Isabel babbled on, “since-“

“I didn’t do it for that,” Sole snapped, silencing her friend most abruptly since their initial meeting.

Isabel’s eyes were wide against the dark fringe of lashes, her posture shrinking back as if she were cringing away from Sole’s heated retort.

“I,” Sole cleared her throat, her cheeks flushing in shame, “I mean, I didn’t do it – any of this – to be a hero. I’m still not.”

A persnickety silence hung between them, a fish only half reeled on a line, flopping boisterously as two imaginary fishermen waited for the damned thing to die already.

Then, with the hopes of patching the divide that suddenly scored between them, Isabel spoke.

“That seems like the sort of thing a hero would say, you know?” her voice cracked, and she swallowed before continuing, “Like, ‘modesty is your most noble quality’, or whatever?”

The corner of Sole’s mouth twitched. Despite the refusal of a smile (it had no place here, after all), Isabel knew her earlier clumsiness was forgiven. She resumed a more natural posture and looked to Sole for elaboration.

“I…” Sole hesitated, her eyes going somewhere far away. 

This was necessary; what had transpired was from a completely separate lifetime from this one. They weren’t to cross under any circumstances; Sole’s sanity depended on it. 

“I had a baby, a really long time ago.”

Isabel nodded in understanding.

“Shaun, right? He’s the…well, the one who-“

“Not him.”

Sole’s voice sounded strange to her. Tired, and heavy in a way she hadn’t felt in centuries. Her chest felt this weightiness as if it were encased in concrete. Both she and Isabel quieted to see what else it came up with.

“Before him,” Sole felt a crack coming up in her voice, and so she paused to wet her lips and test the lump in her throat before continuing. “A little baby boy, and his name was Chris-“ Sole’s voice caught, “ – Christopher.”

It wavered at the end, like it was just barely agreeing to her request to be spoken. Isabel could tell from the creakiness of Sole’s voice, that she hadn’t used it to say that name in a very long time.

“I’m sorry,” Isabel said softly, and it cut Sole like glass. “I had no idea.”

Sole tried to smile reassuringly at her friend, but it was so weak, it faltered into a bleak grimace.

“How could you? I never told you.”

They sat there for a moment, both adjusting to the amount of space this resurfaced grief took up, even in the expansiveness of the room.

“What…happened?”

It was the logical question to ask. If it hadn’t been Sole, perhaps she’d have been the one doing the asking, but it was, and so she resented it, as much as she ached for it.

Her breath caught in her throat then, and she careened into the grief she’d been stifling for years. She had expected this the moment the topic – and Isabel – had encroached on her. She sputtered and coughed through the sobs that began to shake her, first a little, then a lot. 

She knew Isabel was still waiting on an answer; and she had one. She felt ready to get it in the open, or else, to get it out of herself, where it strained against her ribs and filled her lungs with lead. She was ready to talk about the boy she loved, way before her marriage, and the hardships of young motherhood when she had still only been so young herself. Between her, and his father, he’d never stood a chance.

This thought crossed her mind once before – as she stood over Shaun in his crib nearly two-hundred years prior. He’d never stood a chance.

The words wouldn’t come out, and Sole was half grateful, because all of them; his father’s violence, her own numbness, felt like excuses now, though she knew they were valid ones. She settled for crying into the shoulder Isabel pushed her into.

Her mouth fell open, as if she had words to comfort, though none came. Isabel felt as if she were shortchanging Sole, and settled for smoothing her hand down her back in a meager offering at comfort.

“I…shouldn’t have asked,” Isabel murmured, “I’m sorry,” she said again.

Sole was only half though; it had been years since she’d spoken her grief aloud. While pre-war, it was a way to clear rooms, Isabel had only drawn closer since finding out. It seemed, that perhaps this new world finally had the space for this grief to be dealt with. 

This was decidedly healthy, Sole thought, as a new, wet rush of tears streaked down her cheeks, for the end of the torrent was nowhere in sight, and the sheer magnitude of Christopher on her heart could’ve filled the vast warehouse and more.


End file.
